Where the Truth Lies

by Anna Bailey

  Eleanor Lewis, setting up the microphone stand for the following day’s sermon, watched Dolly Blake leaving her husband’s office. Dolly moved slowly along the wall as though she couldn’t stand up by herself. Apparently unaware that she was being watched, she sat down suddenly, heavily, on a chair in the far corner and began to cry—the loud, ugly sort of sound that people only made when they thought nobody could hear them.

  Eleanor rolled her eyes and raised the mic stand a little. Dolly Blake was hardly the first woman to fall out of love with a husband, she thought. There was no need to parade it around quite so dramatically. Imagine if everyone did that. Some things were to be endured, just as Christ endured his stack of splinters.

  NOW

  The trailer park feels empty. On a Sunday morning, most folks are at church, but standing between the rusty swings and the double-wide is a thin man wearing only overalls. If he’s cold he doesn’t show it, but it makes Emma pull her jacket tighter around herself.

  “I’m looking for Shana Tyson,” she says.

  The man’s face betrays no expression at all, but he never takes his eyes off her as he hooks a bird feeder to the awning of his trailer. Emma isn’t sure what kind of birds he’s expecting to feed round here. She has never seen any wildlife at the trailer park, except maybe the crows that congregate on the telephone wires, or the dead things people sometimes bring home to eat.

  “Shana!” he calls suddenly, and a pretty girl pokes her head out of the trailer.

  “What is it, Daddy?”

  “Someone here to see you.”

  Emma clears her throat, bobbing a little on the balls of her feet like maybe she might just turn and walk away. This was a dumb idea. Maybe.

  But Shana Tyson smiles at her. “Emma, right? I know you, you’re Rat’s friend.”

  “Sometimes.”

  Shana laughs. “Yeah, he’s a ‘sometimes’ sort of guy.” She jabs her thumb at the door. “You want to come in? That’s okay, right, Daddy?”

  Her father blinks slowly at her. “Whatever you want, Princess.”

  She kisses him on the cheek before they go inside, and before she shuts the door, Emma thinks she sees him smile.

  The Tysons’ place is nothing like Rat’s on the inside. They have a proper couch, albeit a tiny one, a cuckoo clock on the wall and matching crockery stacked in the drying rack. These are real people, Emma thinks, not just a collection of junk. She frowns out the window at Rat’s RV across the lot.

  “Sorry if my dad scared you there.”

  Emma looks up. “No, it’s fine.”

  Shana leans beside her at the window, running a hand through her thick hair while she watches the bent figure of her father pulling up weeds from the border fence. “He’s not been the same since he came back. He was in Iraq, you know.”

  Emma did not know. She doesn’t know much at all about the trailer-park people.

  “There’s lots of guys like him,” Shana says. “ ‘Ghost-men,’ Mom used to call them. Just wandering around like they don’t really know who they are anymore. Respect the troops, they tell you, but only when they’re dying for you. It’s like they get punished for living on afterward.” She sighs and straightens up. “Are you looking for Rat? I think he went out. His bike’s not there.”

  “Actually, I was looking for you.” She remembers Shana’s face beaming from one of the Polaroids on Hunter’s wall. “I wanted to ask you something. If that’s okay.”

  “Oh sure, what’s up?”

  “It’s about Hunter Maddox. You know him?”

  “Oh, that guy.” Shana laughs. “I mean, he knows how to throw a party, I’ll give him that, but he’s a little wacky.” She mimes toking on a joint. “Way too much of this, if you know what I mean. Surprised he hasn’t been kicked off the basketball team.”

  Emma grins. She likes Shana, she’s decided.

  “Why do you want to know about Hunter?”

  “I think he might have known my friend.”

  Shana’s face drops. “Wait, that Blake girl? You think Hunter might know something?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. Is he ever, like, aggressive toward you? You know, sexually?”

  “Nuh-uh, not Hunter. Some of those boys from the team can get pretty handsy sometimes, but he’s not like that. He’s real nice to girls.”

  “Oh.”

  “His daddy, though. He comes around sometimes, big Jerry, says he’s just checking up on things, but he’ll say some real weird stuff. Like, last week he said I had ‘filled out in all the right places.’ You know, that kind of thing. Daddy can’t stand Jerry, but no one ever hassles him about it because he owns everything. Plus, he’s friends with the pastor.”

  Shana puts her hand on Emma’s arm suddenly. “I’m sorry about your friend. Abigail was a nice girl. A little weird, you know, but she was okay.”

  Emma swallows. Why do people keep talking about her in the past tense, as if they’ve already given up on her? “Did you know Abi too?”

  Shana shrugs. “Not well, but she used to come to Hunter’s parties sometimes. Up here in the woods. And she’d take whatever anyone would give her, pills and stuff. I always felt sorry for her. You see people like that, there’s always something they’re trying to escape from.”

  The word pills slaps Emma like cold water. “No, Abi doesn’t do drugs. She isn’t like that.”

  Shana folds her lips together and squeezes Emma’s arm. “Oh, honey.”

  “No, she’s my best friend, I know her.”

  “Did you?”

  25

  America is at war,” Pastor Lewis declares. “This country is embroiled in a war on drugs, and we, my good brothers and sisters, are on the front line.”

  It’s cold in the church. The heaters aren’t working, although they still groan like they’re trying to gear themselves up for it, so the congregation sits in their coats and jackets, seeming a rather pathetic little mass as they huddle closer together under the pastor’s gaze. Noah rubs his eyes, flinching as his knuckles press too hard against his still-sore cheekbone. Beside him, his mother is chewing her nails in her fingerless gloves. Every now and then she turns her head to scan the crowd as though she’s looking for someone, or perhaps is worried she’s being looked at. The slight pressure against Noah’s right shoulder tells him Jude is seeking some warmth, and he is cold enough too that he does not push his brother away.

  “Our society’s problem with drugs is as old as civilization itself. Drugs make a user a slave to sensation, but they are false prophets, a chemical religion.” Pastor Lewis is wearing a white scarf that Noah can tell must have been expensive because he has gone to the trouble of keeping it very clean. He climbs down from his podium and begins pacing in front of the congregation, slow measured strides, but he never takes his eyes off them, never even seems to blink.

  “The thing that shocks me most, my brothers, my sisters, the thing that shocks me most is how young the seeds of addiction can be planted. I was looking over some of these websites they got now, and some said as young as thirteen years of age, some said twelve. Some said that addict mothers can give birth to babies that already have an addiction to heroin. Newborn babies. Well, that got me thinking. We can direct our anger at the dealers and the pushers, but the addicts? They deserve our compassion. What is it I’m always telling you? Love the sinner, hate the sin? And those who have been coerced in a moment of weakness into consuming addictive substances, they are more in need of our love than our blame.”

  A few rows in front, Noah sees Andie Maddox put her arm around her son and squeeze his shoulder.

  “What this tells me is that these young people, who fall so easily under the influence of drugs, have a need in their life they want to be filled. A spiritual need. They must have something to believe in, something to turn to. The worst thing that can happen to a person is to have no belief in anything. The heart of this country’s drug problem is a spiritual vacuum.

  “Of course, it’s natural to want to blame so
meone for all this horror in our society. It’s quite natural to want to have something to direct your anger toward. We’ve all heard the old adage about the Lord and His mysterious ways—but believe me when I say the devil’s ways are always clear. And if you want to have somebody to blame in the here and now, there is someone in this very town who is about the devil’s work.”

  Hunter Maddox sits up on his tailbone, his mother’s arm slipping from his back.

  “My son brought me some troubling news this Thursday gone. He told me he had witnessed a drug deal occurring right here in Whistling Ridge, and who was behind it but that strutting little gypsy?”

  Something turns sideways in Noah’s throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Jude looking at him. The congregation shifts, uncrossing their legs, murmuring like wind in the grass.

  “My brothers, I ask you, what right does this stranger have to come into our town and intoxicate our children?”

  “Hear, hear!” says Jerry Maddox.

  Noah suddenly feels too tall among the bobbing heads of the congregation, and he sinks down into his seat, clenching and unclenching his fists, until Jude reaches over and takes his brother’s hand. For the first time in a long while, Noah lets him.

  “In John 8:7, Jesus says, He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone, and we are all sinners, let us not in our anger forget that. It is the Lord who punishes sinners, but it is our job to recognize when God is seeking to work through our actions. In cases like this, my brothers, the Bible makes it clear. When Jesus found those moneylenders in the temple, what did He do? When He found people in His Father’s house—in God’s own house—hawking and bartering as if this holy place was no more than a common market, my brothers, my sisters, what did He do? I tell you what He did. Jesus walked into that den of thieves and He tipped over their tables, He poured away their coins! He struck a blow for those of us who prioritize the spiritual life over earthly gains, and so, like Jesus, we must not be afraid to strike out against ungodliness when we witness it.”

  Pastor Lewis climbs back onto his little platform, and there is a smile in his eyes if not on his lips when he says, “These are uncertain times, but one thing I guarantee you: those who corrupt the innocent will be punished with blood and fire.”

  * * *

  “I never liked this place,” says Deputy Saidi. “Creeps me out.”

  Standing in the ruins of the old Winslow house, with moss hanging from the charcoal roof timbers, and wind whistling through the cracks in the mortar, Gains has to agree.

  “You really think there’s something up here?” Saidi asks, rooting through the ferns with a pair of latex gloves.

  Gains hooks his thumbs through his belt loops and sets his jaw. It’s hard to imagine there being much of anything up here. “Initial statement says Emma Alvarez mentioned activity here the night of the incident, but we failed to follow up at the time. Just got to cover our bases.”

  “Gives us something to do until that cardigan comes back, at least.” Saidi sighs, leaning over on one side to stretch. “You not in church today, then, Chief?”

  “Just as you see it. Can’t say I’m much of a churchgoer—you?”

  Saidi snorts. “You think there’s a mosque in Whistling Ridge?”

  Overhead the sky is a heavy blanket of white, hinting at the snow already settling higher in the mountains as September bleeds into October. Today, Gains realizes, it is three weeks exactly since Abigail was reported missing. He had really wanted it to be true, that she’d just split, and he wouldn’t have blamed her, with a family like that. But since they pulled that cardigan out of the river, he’s been fighting this growing sense that he was wrong, and that they have now missed their chance of finding her.

  “Hey, Chief,” says Saidi, suddenly, crouching in the dirt, “this ground look a little uneven to you?”

  * * *

  Noah is unbuckling his seat belt and launching himself out of the door before he’s even killed the engine, taking off across the trailer park, oblivious to the mud churned up by his feet, spattering his Sunday best.

  “Hey, Rat, open up!”

  The heavy feeling of an approaching storm has seeped into the air, and Noah pulls his blazer tighter with one hand, resolving to bloody the knuckles on the other until he gets an answer.

  When Rat opens the door, there’s a curler in the front of his hair and a cigarette between his lips, like some trailer-park pinup.

  “You’re not coming in here with those muddy shoes,” he says, grinning as he flicks the stub of his cigarette at Noah.

  “Fine, whatever.” Noah rakes a hand through his hair, which is damp at the roots with sweat. “Listen, you’ve got to get out of here, you’re in trouble.”

  “Trouble’s my business, baby.”

  “Seriously, can you just stop that for one second? That bastard Dalton Lewis saw you the other night, at the Tall Bones. Told his dad you were dealing drugs and now the whole town’s in a frenzy about it.”

  Rat leans out of the doorway and looks around. “Okay, maybe you should come inside after all.”

  Noah has always liked the RV. It’s like some offshoot of Rat and that feels important. He remembers stepping in here one sultry summer afternoon, seeing the pages of poetry tacked to the walls, and, suddenly, knowing that Rat liked Bukowski felt more jarringly intimate than the fact that they were about to have sex. Now he says, “Guess it won’t be hard for you to leave. You can just drive off in this thing.”

  Rat makes a face. “What makes you think I’m going anywhere? Bunch of Bible-thumping hillbillies don’t scare me.”

  “Well, they should. One of them’s my father.”

  He notices now that Rat is wearing one of the old flannel shirts that he left here months ago, and his feet are bare. Noah’s knees feel weak.

  “I don’t think I can protect you if you stay. Not from my dad.”

  “I don’t need you to protect me, Blake. I do just fine on my own. Always have, but…” Gently he touches Noah’s gravel-scored cheek. “If I go, will you come with me?”

  A heavy knock at the door pulls them apart. Rat goes to open it, still with the curler in his hair, still with no socks on, and he looks so small all of a sudden as Jerry Maddox and Sheriff Gains crowd the doorway.

  “Rat Lăcustă?” Gains asks, although it isn’t really a question. Noah doesn’t know where to put himself as the two men peer into the RV.

  Rat crosses his arms. “Can I help you?”

  Jerry says, “It’s his, all right. I make all the tenants show me their gun licenses and I remember that one—9mm semiautomatic. Goddamn gypsy criminal.”

  Noah bites his lip and moves to stand behind Rat. “Hey, what’s this about?”

  “This doesn’t concern you, Mr. Blake.” Gains holds up a clear bag with a handgun inside. “Mr. Lăcustă, is this your firearm?”

  For the first time in all the months Noah has known him, Rat has nothing to say. He just stares at the gun and nods strangely, like his head isn’t properly connected to his body.

  “Hey, Rat, what are they talking about? You don’t own a gun.”

  Through the gap between their shoulders, Noah can see the storm clouds gathering along the skyline.

  “Mr. Lăcustă,” says Gains, “you’re going to need to come with us.”

  26

  There is just a little icy rain as Emma picks her way over to the RV from the Tysons’ trailer. Outside, there are too many footprints and she wonders who has been here. Even under layers of sweater and scarf and jacket, she shivers when she sees the door ajar, and somehow, even as she knocks, she knows that Rat won’t answer. It seems wrong to go inside when he’s not there.

  “Emma?”

  To her surprise, it is Noah Blake who pushes the door open, slowly, as if he’s afraid who might be on the other side. He has always seemed afraid of something, she thinks.

  “Where’s Rat?” she asks. It had been strange, being up here at the park without seeing him
. She didn’t like all this bad feeling between them, lingering like those black clouds on the horizon, so she figured she’d look in on him, try to fix whatever had snapped when he took off the other night.

  Noah shrugs his high shoulders, disrupting the clean, pressed, Sunday-school shape of him in his button-up shirt. His red hair looks like the aftermath of a slap against the dirty white of the RV, and it feels like one, too, the way it reminds her of Abigail.

  “Noah, where is he?”

  “Rat’s gone,” he says. “The police took him in.”

  She listens as he tells her about what Dalton Lewis saw at the Tall Bones, about the sermon, and the way people got all stirred up. When he mentions the gun, and the shell casing they found in the woods, she remembers the Polaroid on Hunter’s wall, Rat with flowers in his hair and a handgun in his lap.

  “Do they think he shot Abi? They think he did it?”

  It feels wrong being in the RV without Rat. Outside the rain is heavier now, rolling down the windows in heavy, drumming sheets, and a burst of lightning flashes veins across the sky. There is a bottle open on the countertop. Noah takes a long swig, clearly not his first, and grimaces.

  “Peach schnapps,” he says. “Who drinks this shit, huh?”

  Emma stares at the bottle in his hand.

  “You want some?”

  “I shouldn’t…”

  “Go on, I don’t care.” He presses the bottle against her chest. “Saves me from drinking alone.”

  She tips her head back and takes a long, grateful swallow, and she’s missed it, the warm way the alcohol spreads through her body, like so many hands catching her, as if to say It’s all right now, we’ve got you, but the sickly aftertaste catches up with her. “Peach schnapps, my ass. I’ve never had any peach that tastes like that.”

  “He didn’t do it, you know,” Noah says suddenly. “What you said… Rat didn’t shoot Abi.”

  Emma doesn’t know how to answer that. She sits down heavily on Rat’s pile of quilts and takes another long drink, then wipes her mouth with her hand, the way boys do, because a little bit of her is still in awe of Noah Blake, Abigail’s big brother. A little bit of her still remembers Abi’s fierce need to impress him.